Comments on business development and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale by a local.

Friday, October 27, 2006

The firing list for SIUC - which administrators should go?

Wendler is gone, just as the rumor said (check the new comment). He isn't gone until May (or maybe January 1?) as Chancellor, it can't be soon enough. The DE needs to go back and ask the hard questions, they screwed it up earlier this week. The new rumor is this is happening at the next BOT meeting.

Ray Lenzi would go right here, but he retired already.

Seymour Bryson is going to retire soon I bet. He got a 24% pay raise last year and is blasting the university in the press. A huge pay raise is a typical and unethical trick we do in Illinois to give a give our friends a bigger retirement pension as they retire. It should be good for the university when he goes, he has taken his protection of black student to far.

Sue Davis - she is really bad. If you do a Google search for "Sue Davis SIU", my entry about her being the worse administrator of 2006 is number 8! In charge of PR and Marketing at SIUC for years, in addition she is just a terrible manager.

Removed someone because they complained. Don't have time to be fair right now, so I'll check it out and blog about it later.

John Koropchak should likely go. He sent me email complaining about my reasoning, so I have deleted it.

Glafkos Galanos has been chairman of Electrical Engineering for 20 years. He is the inventor of their cleaver program to allow anyone who wants a master degree in EE to enroll in the program. He has also managed to make the department worse, in a time where it is almost impossible to do anything but get better in EE. I suspect there are many other chairs of this quality at SIUC, but this is the one that I have analyzed up close. When you choose professors you can dominate instead of the best quality, you are almost always going to get sub par results. The amazing thing is that all the professors in engineering know all about this guy and do nothing. Sometimes management needs to step up and take care of business. I suspect this is one of those times.

I would name someone in the department of Computer Science, but I'm not sure picking on their chairman who tried to step down (the department is so politically fractured they couldn't elect a chair) is fair. If you want to consider how messed up the College of Science is, they are maybe the only people at SIUC that haven't tried to get money out of me in the last 5 years. Computer Science has never asked. A train wreck. Maybe the new Dean of Science might spend a little effort in CS and tell the professors to grow up?

"John Koropchak should likely go. He is the Donald Rumsfeld of the Southern at 150 plan."

Should likely? This guy has fewer friends than Walter, and for good reason. I think he is more Cheney than Rumsfeld. Minor distinction - no one likes either.

Right now, most points are moot. Walter is a goner, Koropchak and Dietz have no support. Dunn will likely not be forgiven by faculty for not falling on his sword regarding promotion and tenure decisions.

And the best hope for SIUC - ME as interim chancellor - is probably not going to happen. I would've been asked by now.

So who will it be? John Haller? He'd be a good choice. Keith Sanders? Another good choice, but it risks subtracting integrity from the BoT.

John Jackson would probably be best again, but I think that he would probably decline. We'll see.

Reversing SIUC's decline requires recreating "institutional memory" and there are few around who can do that.

Haller? Jackson? It was the old guard that pulled SIUC down. WVW is far from prefect - he has not cleared out enough of the old guard and Peter is right about the marketing issue - but WVW is pushing us in the right direction. Some people do not like to be pushed. Tough. Retire and let those of us whose future is here work on our vision. SIU-community college is the past that we must shake off. I have visited other regional research universities; it can be done and can help the region.

Also, more special admits -- the city colleges of Chicago don't require a high school diploma, so why should we? You must simply be 19. Sounds like a good way to diversify SIUC. Diversity is the point of education, after all.

As far as cutting the college of science some slack, that accounts for the last year or year and a half. Where were they for the 3+ years before that? It is a sad thing when you lose a good person like that.

I get a kick out of the comment that Walt has headed SIUC in the right direction. Kind of like the doctor treating cancer, kills the cancer through treatment, but kills the patient too.

There is something great in the idea of improving SIUC, the hard part is actually doing it without ripping the place apart. I don't think Wendler is the management genius who can thread this needle. I do agree that he isn't stupid, just unable to market or manage effectively.

All junior colleges allow anyone who is 19 year old to enroll without a high school diploma. John A. Logan does it. Pretty standard at all junior colleges coast to coast.

Re Bryson: Most of the students in his program are white. There is no evidence that they are more likely to be involved in crime than other students. I have major problems with the way the program is set up and feel that such programs ought to be located at community colleges. But race-bating has no place in this discussion.

I do not know about B's whole career. Even if this were true, decent people do not respond to race-baiting with racism. The poster did not offer a critique of B's program. He or she smeared a large class of people.

>> I do not know about B's whole career. Even if this were true, decent people do not respond to race-baiting with racism. The poster did not offer a critique of B's program. He or she smeared a large class of people.

I can't understand what this comment is trying to say. Are you saying that Bryson is race-baiting and someone else is responding with racism?

Are you talking about this comment?

>> Bryson for Chancellor. We'll get the whole of South Chicago!

I'm not sure this is racist, it is more elitist in my book.

Follow along, here is a truth tree, if all the black students who might be admitted to U of I under normal conditions are being pursued with full and partial scholarships by U of I and better schools, and if the black students that might succeed at SIUC based on test scores, but normally wouldn't be admitted to U of I, are admitted to U of I or better schools. And if SIUC costs as much as U of I. Doesn't that leave only unqualified black students for SIUC?

It isn't that I think this truth tree is correct, but when I hear that SIUC is going to concentrate on minority students this is what I fear. Admission of students who can not succeed at a university no matter what you do, no matter how far you cut quality standards, are likely to come flowing in. It doesn't matter what skin color a bad student is, what matters is the SIUC administration is talking about recruiting and admitting as many as possible.

I don't think skin color has much place in recruitment of students, but I think that makes me insensitive to diversity issues? Quality is quality. Skin color shouldn't matter as a plus or minus. If you are poor and qualified the government should have grants and low interest loans to help you get through.

A real fear is that SIUC finally gets their student recruiting act together after years of incompetence and the result is to haul in several thousand students with ACT scores of 12 or 14. This is called failing by succeeding. It might be racist to be afraid of many black students, but it isn't racism to be afraid of an army of poor students.

About Me

A software engineer by trade, Peter co-founded Bsquare Corporation of Bellevue, WA (Nasdaq - BSQR). His wood shop is stored on pallets, in his new building, so nothing is happening in the shop. Expect work in manufacturing and other industries that might be successful in a rural community.